Ethics (book)
The Ethics (full title in Latin: Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata, or, in English, Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order) is a philosophical treatise, written by Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza's friends published it after his death, in 1677. The main message of the book is that everything is a part of nature. It is one of the most influential and debated works in philosophy.
The method of the book is mostly geometrical. Definitions and axioms are stated, and propositions and corollaries are derived from these. Prefaces, teachings and appendices, written in more traditional prose, break up the Euclidean rigor.
Read more about Ethics (book): Summary, God or Nature, Reception
Famous quotes containing the word ethics:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)